Filed under: vie quotidienne | Tags: Complaints Department, london, moscow, paris, travel
Imagine the scene: I’m sitting on the RER D – a fast train that connects Charles de Gaulle airport with Gare du Nord in Paris. Across the aisle and laden with baggage is an old couple from Wisconsin on their first trip abroad. On the seat opposite, facing me, is a woman from Sydney who has just taken her daughter to the station, bound for a French exchange course in Brittany. We’re chatting pleasantly about this and that – Moscow, the woman’s daughter, how to get the Wisconsin couple to La Defense, etc. I’ve been up for 56 straight hours by this point, and everything seems to be outlined in very bright colors, and not a little blurry.
Suddenly, an accordion strikes up near the back of the train. As we fly across the tummocky, bare November landscape of suburban France, it suddenly comes clear to me: OH MY GOD, I’M GOING TO FREAKING PARIS!!
This was my first half hour in France.
I’m still trying to process what happened yesterday. I left Moscow at 4am, got to London by 11am, spent the day in a cell, was forcibly (ok… the people who did it were very pleasant, but the gun was very definitely in the room) put back on a plane to Moscow at the whim of some director of immigration who – contrary to what 2 of his subordinates recommended – thought there was the barest possibility I might overstay my visa, even though I have an onward ticket and have never overstayed a visa before, was led by a group of very scary-looking Muscovite goons through Domodedovo airport before standing in the freezing cold for an hour outside the guard’s shack as they drank tea from a samovar, and then finally let go with a very typical “No problem!” from the army officer on duty. (In that way I prefer the Russians to the Brits. The Brits make great show of being your friend, of speaking with you, being solicitous, acting as though they’ll let you in, etc, and the screw you over. The Russians totally ignore you and refuse to speak in anything except Russian – though, of course, they all understand English – while inspecting your paperwork to an almost melodramatic scrutiny and generally given you the impression that you’re going to be turned out into the night to starve… and then invariably turn out to be completely cool, no bribes needed.. I will take Russian immigration over UK immigration any time.) I finally got to Paris (via Moscow, London, Moscow, and Vienna) 38 hours after starting my journey.
Totally not my day(s).
I’m in Paris (truly a civilized place – with no landing cards to fill in, no metal detectors whatsoever, and… where’s the border checkpoint in the airport? I didn’t even see one! France, I salute you!) and finally alone in a hotel room… and trying to let the wall down that I built yesterday to keep back terror and possible hysterical sobbing from occurring in one or another cell in one or another country.
Tax cattle. That has hit home.
I return to NYC on 4 December. “Pour aller ou?” as the French would say.
“Call back later, I’m busy, ok?”
Thanks, L!
The recruiter told me that she’d have an answer for me on Monday. It’s now Tuesday afternoon, and I’ve been brushed off. Thoughts have been crowding in. “I need to give notice by the end of next week!” “I don’t want to go to work today!” “I don’t want to work here any more!” “I’ve got to do something!”
It’s taking a good deal of difficulty to remind myself that I don’t have to do anything. Yes, it’s true that if I want to avoid being contractually obligated to give 4 weeks notice to the school I’m working at now, I need to give notice by 28 November – the end of my trial period. But it’s also true that the only thing they have hanging over me is the payment of ½ month’s salary… which I’d make in about 3 days in the job I interviewed for. The school I’m working at now can’t sue me – or they can, but they won’t. I know this for an incontrovertible fact. The worst they can do is cancel my visa, in which case I buy a new one. I wouldn’t feel at all bad giving no notice to this school – because I don’t need the reference, they’ve treated me like utter shit, and fundamentally there’s no difference between giving immediate notice on Friday the 28th or Monday the 1st… because either way they still need to find a new teacher, and 2 days (except from the contract’s point of view) make no difference whatever.
So, the truth is that I don’t have to give notice by the 28th at all. That’s that thought.
Do I want to go to work today? No. I enjoy my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes, but I don’t at all enjoy the Tuesday and Thursday ones. Why? Well… could it have something to do with the fact that I teach straight through from 4 until 10? Maybe with the fact that the students in my first two classes are teenagers who don’t actually want to be there, and won’t do anything without my expending significant mental and physical energy? That it really does physically hurt for me to expend the amount of energy needed to get a bit of enthusiasm or laughter out of them? I don’t know. I’m hesitant to blame the students. Maybe, the thought now is, that I’ve just taken a dislike for no reason to my Tuesday and Thursday classes? But that cannot be. Feelings don’t come for “no reason.” This deep antipathy to teaching at Strogino must come from somewhere.
What is it about the Monday and Wednesday classes? The class is pre-intermediate adults. They speak little English, but they are keen to learn and are full of good humor, energy, and enthusiasm. I have a great time teaching them, and will be sad to lose them when I quit. Even my Monday and Friday teenagers – advanced level – love to laugh and are not afraid of looking foolish. They like to swear a lot to try to show off their “cool-ness” but as long as it’s in English and they understand and work with the grammar and vocab I’m trying to teach them, who cares if they swear?
Both of these classes are denominated by great good humor, which is utterly absent from my Tuesday and Thursday classes. The attitude I bring to teaching them is different… but is that a cause of or a result of my dislike of them? Which came first? In the beginning, I tried to like teaching these classes. Why did I stop?
So the truth is… well, the truth is that I find teaching these classes to be utterly loathsome. And the truth is that to maintain my income and residence in Moscow until I can successfully get another job, I choose to teach these classes anyhow. The truth is that the money and place to stay rank higher on my scale of values right now. The truth is also that if I didn’t have to worry about money and a place to stay – if I could find interim measures – I’d quit this afternoon.
The next thought… “I don’t want to work here any more.” Why is that? To be sure, I don’t mind teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays. The American teachers (why only the Americans? Though I must say one is from a town of 100 people in Kentucky, and the other is from Abilene, TexASS – so both have all the prejudices and narrow-mindedness endemic in southern towns) are pretty horrible – their minds are narrow and they have no conversation at all, but I don’t need to have much interaction with them. The British teachers are very nice indeed, and two of them (my roommate, and one other) I especially like, and get on well with. They have somewhat expanded minds and good conversation. I can discuss many things with them – Richard Dawkins and atheism (both are atheists), academia, Moscow life, job searching, etc – and while I wouldn’t count them as bosom buddies (and while I can’t discuss philosophy or the family with them, which prevents me from becoming close to them at all), I do like being around them for short periods. With the Americans, no topic except drinking and how loathsome their students are can be broached. Why should that be? I don’t understand it.
So… the truth is that I don’t actually mind working where I am. I knew about the low pay before I signed up. I needn’t have much intercourse with the American teachers, thank god. The Brits, the Brazilian, and the New Zealander are actually quite nice. There are opportunities to expand my abilities as a teacher by taking part (unpaid, of course) in seminars and workshops on teaching techniques, etc. The only things I really abominate are the classes I teach on Tuesday and Thursday, and the unpaid overtime.
“I’ve got to do something!”
Well… really, I don’t. I could continue in this sober round of days for many years. I am not in any imminent danger. I have a place to sleep, enough to eat, and the prospect of some time to travel – though not, if I continue to work here, the money to pay for said travel. I have been in many worse positions in my life. I’m in a better position than when I first moved to Dallas, for example. In the worse case scenario I would move back to NYC and beg to crash on someone’s couch till I got an apartment and an IT job – or any job, really. That’s not too bad of a case.
In fact, this interlude is actually good in showing me what I abominate – what I can’t stand, or at least don’t like. It’s good for showing me lots of things about this authentic self I’m becoming.
But it is – in about half an hour – time to go to Strogino. I’m feeling the usual tightness in my neck, just on the right side. I really don’t want to go. It would make me feel so good in the short term to quit and not have to go today, or to call in sick and avoid going. But long-term, it’s not sustainable.
What is a higher priority: a place to sleep, or following my feelings? That’s probably the wrong way to ask the question – or the wrong question to ask. There’s got to be a way I can get both. There’s got to be a way I can satisfy both my physical needs and emotional ones.
What way? I don’t know. I’m soooo tempted to pin all this anxiety on one thing – on L’s not telling me whether or not I got the job. Or even whether or not the parents have made a decision. But really… L is not the lynchpin of my life. She’s not the arbiter of my fate. My life is not waiting on her decision. But oh, it’s sooooo tempting to think “She is making me feel this!”
But she isn’t. Why, then, should I not be happy to think that because I am responsible, I only have the power to act?
More details to come later. I just can’t WAIT to show you the pics of my flat. Only the best Stalin-era decor going on around here! At least I’m able to steal internetz.
Way to go @ Google for automatically translating all its pages into Russian for me. Maybe it’ll make me learn faster. Spasiba balshoia, Google.
